The Hall of Awesomeness

I am reading a book on Narratives and research, as losers like me are want to do, when I stumbled across something strange.  The author was talking about stories.  Of course, it’s a book on narratives you say.  However, it was about the stories people tell.    It read something like this:

The story behind the story is part of a bigger story that we have all agreed on at some point.

It’s a meta-narrative that acts as a guide post for what we come to hold as true and dear.  I had a further problem with this, as I usually do.  Exactly what is a meta-narrative?  A collection of stories that explain the other stories we tell?  No, that’s explaining something through association.  How do we come to tell stories and make sense?  Why do we make sense?  Do we make sense?

We use instruments, various devices and all kinds of mental tools to construct the language, thoughts and ideas we have.  Yet, it leaves me with a question I can’t answer.  What lies behind the stories?  A void, blackness… certain death for all who live there.  What if there was a world of stories existing above those stories that encapsulated all stories ever told?  I wonder what it would look like.  I congratulate you if you got this far in this absurd post.  I need to write more but less of that which doesn’t matter… like my trivial meanderings.

I am growing tired of a lot of things lately dammit.  Here’s one of them:

The people in charge of our internet.

As an Australian academic who teaches information policy to international students I find this kind of rant from our senator embarrassing.  I mean really, attacking Google over a mistake with wifi data?   Then going on to say that it was a breach of privacy?  Anyone who has been around computers long enough knows how easy it is to get access to free wifi.  I wonder, where these networks secured and do the people who own them even know they were secured?  WHO KNOWS?

The students in my information policy class last night discussed this and came up with much better interpretations than the present person sitting in the job.  Even though I took the time to consider the internet filter and other issues… I think I can safely say that this man doesn’t represent me at all.  He keeps saying and doing things that boggle the mind.

Ok the rant is over for now.

It most industries I have encountered, advertisers lie.  This is obvious to most and the distrust bread in the general public is now at a point where I believe most people have stopped believing what advertising says to us.  When the celebrity comes on to our screens and smiles showing us, ‘you can look just like me’ an uneven false image is created.   You can’t hope to look like them.  Yet advertisers build their campaigns around a deep down truth that is a lie we tell ourselves.  Things such as:

You can look younger by using skin cream

You can improve you health by drinking this

Take these pills and you will lose weight fast with no side effects

And so on and so on. Why do we buy these lies?  Even television channels do this by piquing our interest with clever editing in the commercials.  They place a well-crafted lie in a commercial and we accept it… or do we?  I think we know it’s false and realise the lie but buy things in hope.  We don’t believe false advertising with our minds, we believe them with our actions, often against our better judgement.

I think this is kind of theatre we have grown accustomed to and expect.  Take for example the following advertisement:

In a strange way Cadbury are selling chocolate by way of entertainment.  A marketing guru I saw on the Gruen Transfer argued that chocolate sales went up as a result of that ad.  I would say it this way: Interest was piqued in chocolate because of that ad and people remembered why they liked it and went and bought it.  I don’t think you need to advertise to sell chocolate, just sell it at a reasonable price and people will buy it and this is the point isn’t it?

What Advertising people do so well is play with our Engagement, the way we think and act in social settings.  Engagement is a word I have used to talk about how people think and how that influences the way they act.  Advertising plays on both.  If I was being a pragmatic philosopher I would say, ‘thinking is acting’.  That is, advertisers make us think and because that influences our behaviour.  That’s no surprise but what is: they deceive us to do it.   For my final example, I will use real estate advertising.

Real Estate is a controversial area.  So many people have been ‘ripped’ off by agents in one way or another.  Yet, the way a house is sold relies explicitly on the honesty of the buyer and the real estate agent.  My father in law told me how he recently pulled out of buying a house simply because the building inspection came back as showing evidence of termites.  In Australia, especially Brisbane, this is a big deal.  It can mean you have massive damage to the structure of the house and you will be up for thousands of dollars in repair bills.   He had built into the contract that subject to a building inspection, he wouldn’t purchase the house.   So he didn’t.  He lost his deposit and recent reports show that the same house has been resold twice in three years.  All that pain could have been avoided if an honest approach prevailed.  Yet, you can’t sell a house unless you lie… right?

Putting aside all arguments about ethics, integrity and character, there is another pragmatic issue for advertisers here that needs thinking about.  That is, the issue of how to sell things in an economy where attention is the scarcity.  Does that mean more dishonesty should come in so we pay attention?  Are we really to believe the claims of real-estate agents?  I think not.  Yet, these are the social connections we have forged.  It doesn’t mean every real estate agent is a liar or a cheat.  Of course not.  But, which one that you know would happily point out the termites in a building and say, ‘hey check this out, there’s a huge problem that’s going to cost you thousands of dollars.’  It’s ‘buyer beware’ because that’s the society we live in and that’s what we expect.  So it is in advertising, we know it’s pretend so we go along with so-called false advertising and accept it because we know we are being lied. It’s a social contract.

The question is: why have we come to accept it?

We often argue with people simply to prove our point or win.  Take for example the following debate:

‘I believe in free will I can do what I want.’

VS.

‘I believe in FATE everything is predetermined.’

For the record I don’t know what I believe.  Back to the post.  How can you ever resolve this?  You can’t.  It’s a bipolar idea.  It has one side which is a the down side and one which is the upside.  Do you know what these ideas have in common?  They are based on an assumption/assessment of the future.  Yet there is a connection here.  If these people both went about their lives something would happen… something magical.  They would eventually die and at some point they are likely to pay tax.   Yet they would never report the event in the same way:  It’s God’s will that I pay tax, I choose to pay tax.  It’s God’s plan that I die, I die because I choose to keep living.  Both ways of thinking are different yet can never be proven outside the frame of human thought.  Why?  Because, they are bipolar ideas.  If one says the sun is up, the other says it’s down.

Here’s a third option

Try another idea.  Why not say somethings are predetermined others are not, because I choose.  Or let’s just do away with the whole stupid bipolar idea in the first place and say it this way: I have no idea.  I pay tax because I don’t want to go to jail and I die because life stops at some point.  No big deal.  It’s just the way it has to be because I choose to pay tax.    Or because I can’t cheat death I choose to keep living until I expire.  The predetermined has now become my choice, even though it’s not a choice at all.

Breaking your brain?

Maybe.  But remember it’s only an idea and that’s all it could be ever ever ever.  Why?  I don’t know why it’s just what I believe.  An idea only has the power to convey the abstract long enough until the reality of life hammers it out.  Yet, I won’t know that a turtle rules world as suggested by some religions and Stephen King until I die.  Even then I may never find out.  It may be black and I will be alone.  I still believe in Ghosts.

Is there more than one answer?

To Bipolar ideas?  No.  They are the same idea but looked at from two different points of view at once.   Not all ideas are bipolar some tripolar some have no polar, others are simply unanswerable.   Some ideas though have a special quality in that they are the same idea but because they are dealing with a difficult concept you can actually see them two ways at once.

See what happens when you do a PhD kids you eventually go crazy.